Volunteer Gardener

Amazing, giving, inspiring and awesome are just a few of the words we would use to describe our volunteers.

Our volunteers play an integral part in the services we provide and the people we support. If you are looking for a rewarding role where you will really make a difference whilst gaining experience along the way, then join us here at Rethink Mental Illness.

About the role

We are looking for Volunteer Gardeners and Group Leads to support our service at John Hall Wellness Garden in Leek, Staffordshire. For these roles, you should be able to commit to a minimum of 2 hours per week.

You will receive training and regular supervision to ensure you feel confident in your role. 

About the service

Our service is open on Monday - Friday 9am - 4pm, and Saturdays 9am - 3pm. Our garden is a beautiful walled garden and we are developing the grounds and activities we provide. The vision is to provide a wellness garden for the community as a way of improving mental health and wellbeing. We welcome groups into the garden and individuals can also register to become Friends of the Garden. We also have activities and sessions taking place around gardening skills and planting as well as craft and walking groups.

What you will be doing as a Volunteer Gardener:

Our register volunteers take a guiding role around the garden this could be, for example, either leading a small group such as a weekly gardening session or leading a peer support group (we currently run wellness sessions such as crafts, creative writing and walking groups). The Garden has scope to consider a range of differing gardening activities to meet the needs of the community and our registered volunteers play a pivitol role in supporting this venture. Ideas for differing gardening sessions will always be considered therefore, if you believe you have the skills, or would like to develop the skills, to lead a group then please get in touch.

What will make you a great fit for this role?

• Previous experience of leading groups
• Gardening and/or craft knowledge or a skill that would benefit a long term group activity

The Volunteer Manager recruiting is Nicola Pazir. If you have any questions about this opportunity, please contact Nicola at 

Who are we?

We’re Rethink Mental Illness, a leading charity provider of mental health services in England. We support thousands of people through our groups, services, policy, campaigns and advice and information. Our work supports us in delivering on our mission: “A better life for everyone severely affected by mental illness.”

We welcome applications from everyone, applicants with lived experience, those who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ ), people with a disability, or those from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds are actively encouraged to apply. We are proud to have also been awarded Disability Confident employer status. We have an ambition of becoming an anti-racist organisation and we recognise there is more to do in ensuring our recruitment is fair and inclusive, which is why we are recruiting new roles in helping us to achieve this.